


Flutterby

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Bugs & Insects, F/M, First Kiss, Introspection, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 10:34:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9815996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: There's an insect clinging to a piece of the charred wood, wings full of shockingly vivid colors, blues and blacks iridescent in the sunlight. Furiosa's never seen a moth so bright, can understand why it caught his attention.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [a kinkmeme prompt](http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/3004.html?thread=1796284#cmt1796284)!

"Oh," Max says, a soft surprised noise. "Oh, hey, hey."

She looks away from the tangle of wires and pipes she's sorting through to see what it is that's caught his attention, what's made him sound so concerned. He's hunkered over something, but she can't see what until he reaches for his pack, digging through it.

There's an insect clinging to a piece of the charred wood, wings full of shockingly vivid colors, blues and blacks iridescent in the sunlight. Furiosa's never seen a moth so bright, can understand why it caught his attention.

"Here you go," he mumbles, and she watches with a touch of disbelief as he sets a piece of their last fresh peach before it.

"What are you doing?" she asks. Max startles a little; the moth flutters its wings very slowly, closed and open again.

He shrugs. "They drink flowers. Sugar-water."

It doesn't explain why he's feeding it, though he holds the rest of the peach out to her after taking a bite of his own out of it. Furiosa looks at the salvage in front of her and decides now's as good a time for a break as any. She takes the fruit and fills her mouth with the over-ripe flesh of it, juice dripping down her fingers.

They pass it back and forth until there's nothing but the pit left. She'll plant it before they leave the burned wreck of a house they're scavenging from and if they're lucky, perhaps it'll actually sprout.

She goes back to work once she's licked the juice off her greasy fingers, yanking bundles of wires out of the pile of metal salvage. Max moves to another spot, leaving the moth on its piece of wood. The colors of its wings keeps catching her eye as the day wears on, a splash of blue against the red sand and blackened ash.

By nightfall it doesn't seem to have moved a centimeter and he returns to it, face creasing into a frown at whatever he sees.

"We should set up," Furiosa says. They camp light, a few blankets and just enough cooking supplies to heat up water and cook anything they might have hunted. She doesn't think the moth is going to contribute much to dinner.

He grunts, moving away from the moth on its perch to rummage through his car. He takes out the camp stove and she takes it, but he keeps fiddling until he comes up with a small glass jar, dirty the way everything is but intact, with a lid to match. He rubs at the inside with the edge of his shirt and then shrugs, walking back to the moth.

"What are you doing?" she asks for a second time that day.

Max looks up at her and there's sadness in his eyes. "It didn't make it."

She doesn't understand what he means until he crouches back by the insect, jar in hand. It doesn't move or react at all to him gently nudging it into the jar with the lid and she realizes that it's dead, must have died despite his trying to give it something to eat. His hands are big and rough, the type that should destroy something so fragile in a single careless movement- and yet the moth is entirely undamaged when he coaxes it inside.

Furiosa sets up the stove to heat some water; the scavenging's gone well enough that she thinks they won't be lingering much longer here before returning and despite the fact that they already indulged with the peach earlier, she feels as if tonight might be a night to use some of their tea packets.

He joins her after a minute, and holds the jar with the moth for her to see. "I haven't seen a butterfly in, hmm..." he trails off, frown tugging his lips as he tries to count up the days. He shakes his head. "In a long time."

She accepts the jar with care, peering inside at the blue insect. The word is one she hasn't heard in a long time and it's been far longer since she last saw one, hadn't even thought that the thing could be more than just a moth; even dead it's a brilliant color, wings ragged at the edges in their delicacy.

"It's pretty," Furiosa says, the word awkward in her mouth and unable to convey the meaning she intended.

He nods and hums, and when she hands the jar back he takes it carefully. He goes to his car and tucks it away somewhere, coming back with a packet of jerky shreds to make broth with.

"Girls'll want to see it," he says some time later, hands curled around his tin of hot soup, cobbled together from the random things they have in their ration packs. It feels like a night to go off-course, to take things as they come, and anyway they'll be back before a bit of indulgence costs them.

She takes a sip of her own cup and hums an agreement; they love little signs of nature, and things that are beautiful. But she doesn't think Max had tried to feed the butterfly because he was thinking of the girls.

It's more than just a soft spot for animals, though he's got one of those a mile wide. He does things like that sometimes despite how hard he tries to keep people at arm's length, like he can't help but want to help. He'd told her once that hope is a mistake and yet she knows he hopes for the best anyway despite the futility of it.

Furiosa stretches out her legs, back leaning against his car. If she looks closely she can see the remains of stenciled-on letters underneath the black paint, raised just slightly off the surface. The MFP never even got close to the Green Place but she heard about them the way you always hear of such things, heard about people trying to keep the world from going entirely to shit even after there was too much momentum to stop it.

It hadn't surprised her to realize that Max was one of them, once.

They doused the fire after they were done cooking so there's only the light of the stars, the nearly-full moon illuminating the crisp night air. It's getting to be cold and this would have her reaching for a blanket on an ordinary night, but instead she leans to her side until her shoulder rests against his.

He shifts, and then his arm is over the backs of her shoulders, and it takes no effort to tuck herself close to his side. Max is always pretty warm under his ever-present jacket and some nights she's willing to take advantage of the fact, now that he doesn't always startle at contact. Now that she wants to reach out for him.

"Mm?" he asks, head turning away from staring idly off at the sky to look at her. He can be so soft when he needs to be, when murder and rage hinder more than help, and it never ceases to be a wonder that he's kept that alive inside himself somehow.

Furiosa sets her empty mug on the ground next to her and brings her hand up to his jaw instead. This will be as close to an invitation as she thinks she can make, and if he turns her down she knows she won't try again. He means too much to her for her to make uncomfortable, means too much for her to dwell on impossibilities.

He looks surprised, but not alarmed or confused. She leans into him and he leans into her and they meet somewhere in the middle, mouths tentative against one another.

Her experience with kissing is brief, limited to closed-mouth pecks and harsh biting, two ends of a scale where she has only a hazy idea of the middleground. She pulls back before this one gets any more complicated, just far enough to catch her breath- funny, that something so simple should make it seem hard to get enough air.

Max's arm is still around her but he makes no move to pen her in, bodies tilted in towards one another. His eyes are running over her face, gaze catching on her mouth, her eyes. He hums another question.

She moves in to kiss him again, amazed at the softness of his lips against hers; when she feels him part his she follows suit, clumsy. It isn't that she hasn't had sex before- and she's even liked it, some of the time- but she's never wanted to kiss someone like this, never wanted to close her eyes and feel his breath against hers, never wanted to just _be_ the way she wants to be with Max.

He's the one to break off, just when she thinks she's getting the hang of the way their mouths can move together, and his forehead rests heavy against hers.

They're in the open wasteland, toxic dust and charred wrecks all around them, and Furiosa should feel exposed just knowing neither of them has eyes out on watch. She feels safe instead, secure in the knowledge of what violence they're both capable of if needs be and newly coming aware of what it means that she trusts herself with someone who tried saving something as doomed as a butterfly.

She wants to surge up into his lap, get him hard while he touches her all over, take him the way she's taken everything she wants- swiftly, entirely, because there may never be another chance. And she wants to never move beyond this moment, so close she can feel the gentle movement of air as he blinks his eyelashes. And still some other part of her wants to step back three paces entirely, wants to return to her own space and her own air and the feeling of only her own skin.

His hand is on the back of her neck, thumb sweeping at the division between skin and hair, holding her as carefully as he'd held that butterfly as if she is anywhere near as fragile. She tilts her head to find his lips again and thinks they'll have time to decide what road to take.


End file.
